


if I kiss you where it's sore

by cmc



Category: SKAM (France)
Genre: Bipolar Disorder, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Established Relationship, M/M, happy ending I promise, look at the time it's Projecting O'Clock
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-16
Updated: 2019-06-16
Packaged: 2020-05-12 23:32:16
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,350
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19239316
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cmc/pseuds/cmc
Summary: “I’m sorry,” he says, and, god, how many times have they had this exact same conversation? How many times until Lucas gets sick of it? “About yesterday.”





	if I kiss you where it's sore

**Author's Note:**

> title is from better by regina spektor

It would be easier, he thinks, if he could at least understand why it happens.

It goes like this, always: Eliott is fine for a while, and then all of the sudden he’s not fine. He’ll have good days, and then he has one bad day, and then he has more bad days in a row, and then before he knows it he’s had an entire month of bad days. Sometimes he gets over it, and other times it lasts several months.

Sometimes it happens when too much changes, sometimes it happens when everything stays the same for too long. He doesn’t understand it, and he wants to pluck his brain out of his skull and kick it until it’s nothing but a pile of pink pulp, screaming _at least be consistent, you piece of shit_.

Whenever he goes back to being fine, it’s like he has amnesia. He starts wondering if he’s being too dramatic, if he’s making the whole thing up. Maybe he’s not really bipolar - he was misdiagnosed, it was all a mistake. He’s fine, really, he’s fine. Look at him: a functioning adult with a job, contributing to society, up and out of bed like a real person. No mental illness here.

Then he gets bad again, and he remembers. Then he gets good again, and he forgets. Repeat ad infinitum.

Right now, he’s definitely remembering it.

His brain has been - weird, to say the least, the past week or so. Like his mind is a hermit crab, and the rest of him is the little kid on the beach, poking at it to try to get it to come out, not understanding that his actions are the very thing making it scuttle away and hide.

He didn’t do anything particularly noteworthy while he was hypomanic, pacing around and talking too fast and he started about ten new art projects that he’ll never finish, but that’s about it. But the depression is hitting him hard, now. And it’s not the kind of depression where he’s sad, or thinking about suicide - he feels nothing.

Well, no, that’s not true. He’s capable of one emotion, and it’s irritation.

He’s actually able to force himself to go to work, but every time anyone says anything to him he wants to rip his ears off. One of his coworkers spends five minutes talking about her daughter to him, and he chants _I don’t care I don’t care I don’t care I don’t care I don’t care_ in his mind until the interaction is over. His boss asks him to do some menial task and he can feel his blood pressure spike - _do_ something? At his job? Fucking ridiculous.

He spends the first few nights at home, but every time his parents so much as breathe he feels a fresh batch of annoyance rush through his veins. When Friday night rolls around he shows up at Lucas’s door, unprompted, wearing the same sweatpants he’s been wearing to sleep for the past six nights, and he breezes right into Lucas’s room and collapses on his bed and falls asleep without so much as a hello.

He wakes up early, too early for a weekend, and he drinks two cups of coffee and eats a bowl of cereal before going back to bed. He can’t fall asleep, so he ends up staring at the wall for four hours, listening to the white noise from the ceiling fan.

He gets up eventually, migrates to the living room, and he plants himself on the couch. Lucas is sitting at the table doing his homework - even though the school year just started up, his workload is already never-ending - and he looks up and smiles before sticking his nose back in his book.

He didn’t say much when Eliott showed up unannounced yesterday, beyond asking him what was up (“My parents are annoying me.” “What are they doing?” “Existing.”) before swiftly moving to what they should have for dinner. He doesn’t know if Lucas understands that he’s depressed right now - he thinks he does, but he hasn’t asked.

It’s weird - part of him wants Lucas to ask him what’s wrong, another part of him knows he’ll snap if Lucas so much as hints that he can tell Eliott isn’t acting normally. His brain is itching for a fight but he’s exhausted, too, doesn’t think he could yell if he tried.

So he just sits on Lucas’s couch and stares blankly at the TV, listening to the gentle scratch of Lucas’s pen against paper until that, too, starts annoying him.

Lucas must eventually decide to take a break, because he puts his books to the side and stands up, wandering over to where Eliott is taking up residence on the couch. He sits down next to him with a sigh, and Eliott can feel his eyebrow twitch.

They sit in silence, for a moment, before Lucas speaks up.

“What are we watching?”

Eliott pauses before answering. “TV.”

Lucas remains silent for another moment, and it sits heavily between them.

Eventually, Lucas speaks again. “Eliott - ”

“Fuck,” Eliott groans, flopping his head against the back of the couch. “Can you just _leave me alone?”_

He can see Lucas tense, out of the corner of his eye, and he feels like such a fucking asshole.

Eventually, Lucas says, “Okay,” and stands back up, leaves Eliott alone on the couch again, and fuck, fuck, no, come back, please come back.

Lucas works on his homework for the rest of the day, and Eliott remains on the couch, stewing in anger and regret and stubbornness. He goes to bed when the sun has just barely set and lies awake, listening to Lucas and Mika and Lisa in the living room until he falls asleep.

Lucas isn’t in bed when he wakes up the next morning, and he wonders if Lucas even slept in his bed at all, or if he relegated himself to the sofa. He turns over and the other side of the bed feels cold.

He is such a fucking asshole.

This is what he was talking about, when they had their talk, and agreed to take their relationship minute by minute. That’s all well in theory, but what happens when Eliott is hurting Lucas in _this_ minute? What happens when he kicks his boyfriend out of his own bed because he’s a dick who snaps at him, his loving boyfriend, who has never shown him anything but kindness? What happens when he doesn’t _know_ why he feels this way but his brain is _making him?_

Lucas doesn’t deserve this. They’ve been together for more than six months - he didn’t deserve it then, and he doesn’t deserve it now.

Eventually, he hears the door creak open, and soft footsteps against the floor. Eliott’s back is to the door, and Lucas must think he’s still asleep, because he moves lightly around the room, soft as a mouse.

Eliott can’t stand that he’s not touching him, suddenly, and he shifts, turning his head. “Lucas,” he says, quietly.

Lucas looks up - he’s got a basket of laundry, and he’s tucking hangers into his shirts and putting them in his closet - and over at Eliott.

Eliott hesitates, but he extends his arm out in Lucas’s direction, his hand an open invitation.

Lucas looks at him for a minute, before he sets the shirt in his hands back on his pile of clothes, and he circles around the bed to the other side and climbs in, so he’s facing Eliott.

Lucas scoots close to him, but he keeps a bit of distance between them, pulling the blanket up to his chin and situating his pillow.

He searches Eliott’s eyes, for a minute. “Hey,” he says, gently.

Eliott swallows. “I’m sorry,” he says, and, god, how many times have they had this exact same conversation? How many times until Lucas gets sick of it? “About yesterday.”

“It’s okay,” Lucas says. “You’re forgiven.”

He started saying that, a while ago - _you’re forgiven_. Every time Eliott apologizes, Lucas doesn’t brush it off, anymore, doesn’t say they should just forget about it. Doesn’t dismiss the guilt Eliott feels, because he does feel it, even if he shouldn’t. _You’re forgiven_.

Lucas always says it so easily, with so much care. Like he doesn’t know he’s doing it, lifting the slab of brick wall that fell on Eliott and trapped him after an earthquake with one hand, so Eliott can breathe again.

Eliott closes his eyes. “Thank you,” he says, taking a deep breath. “I still don’t know how you put up with me.”

Lucas remains quiet, and Eliott eventually opens his eyes, again, to find Lucas watching him.

“Eliott,” he says. “I don’t _put up with you_. I love you.”

“I still - ” he starts, swallows. “You deserve someone with a normal brain.”

Lucas starts speaking before Eliott can barely finish his sentence. “Okay, no,” he says, and Eliott snaps his eyes up to Lucas’s face, and he realizes Lucas is _mad_. “No. We’re not gonna do that.”

“No?” he asks.

“No. That is such bullshit, Eliott, no. I’m with you because I want to be with you, not because we - _deserve_ each other or some shit. It’s not about deserve, it’s - and I just realized that’s a line from _Wonder Woman_ , but I’m sticking by it, because it’s not. I love you, you love me, that’s it.”

“But - ” he says. “But I’m - I’m manic, I’m depressed, and it’s for no fucking reason, Lucas, that’s just how I am. And that’s how I’m going to be my whole life. Even if I’m on the right medication and I go to therapy I’m still going to be this way.”

“Eliott,” Lucas says. “Do you remember a few months ago, when we had that fight about what happened with you and Idriss?”

He does, vividly. They were in this very room, yelling at each other in a way they hadn’t really done, yet, before Eliott had stormed out. It had taken lots of talking before Eliott told Lucas, only after Lucas apologized for trying to force him to say everything that happened before he was ready.

“Yes.”

“And do you remember what you told me, right before you left?” Lucas asks.

He can still hear his own voice in his ears. _Stop trying to force me to tell you, Lucas. Stop trying to make my decisions for me. Lucille used to do that, and I fucking hated it_.

Eliott takes a breath. “I said you need to stop trying to make my decisions for me.”

Lucas nods. “That goes for me too, you know.” He scoots closer to Eliott, lifts his arm so it’s around Eliott’s waist, warm and solid. “You decide for you. But you need to let me decide for me. And my decision is that I want to be with you.” He moves his hand up, trails his fingertips against Eliott’s side, featherlight, until he reaches his face, and his touch feels so good on Eliott’s cheek. “What do you want?” he asks, quietly, not to break the silence permeating the rest of the room, outside of their little bubble on the bed.

“You,” Eliott says. “I want to be with you.”

Lucas holds his gaze, and his blue eyes - how could anyone think blue is one of the cool colors? Surely it belongs with the reds, yellows and oranges, filling him up with light, surrounding him with warmth.

They look at each other for a while longer before Lucas nods, again, with finality. “Okay,” he says. “That’s good, since we’re already together and everything.”

That gets Eliott to crack his first smile in days, and he feels it tugging at his lips, blooming over his face. Lucas smiles back at him, and he rubs the pad of his thumb over the edge of Eliott’s smile, just at the corner of his mouth.

“So we’re good?” Lucas asks.

“Yeah,” Eliott says. “We’re good.”

Lucas scoots closer to him, again, so they’re pressed together, arms pulling each other closer. Lucas kisses him, and his mouth is soft as it moves against his own, and Eliott can’t believe he went days without feeling how healing Lucas’s touch is.

They kiss for a while before they pull away, and Eliott rests his forehead on Lucas’s, breathing in his scent.

“I love you,” Lucas says.

“I love you, too,” he says, when he pulls away. "I'm sorry it's so hard to love me."

Lucas pulls back a bit so he can look him in the eye. "Eliott," he says. "Falling in love with you is the easiest thing I've ever done."

He doesn't even know what to say to that - he feels tears well up in his eyes, and he blinks them away before they can fall. He leans back in to kiss Lucas, again, hopes he can convey to Lucas that he feels the exact same way, that loving him comes as naturally as breathing. 

They lie there for a while, not saying anything, doing nothing - and it’s so different than Eliott lying alone in bed and doing nothing, as he has been the past few days. It’s so different to do nothing with Lucas, and he doesn’t know how Lucas can make _doing nothing_ better, but he does. He makes everything better.

Eventually, Eliott remembers something.

“Your clothes are going to get all wrinkly,” he says, into the quiet space between their mouths.

Lucas huffs a laugh. “So I’ll have wrinkly clothes,” he shrugs.

“I can go back with you, if you need to spin them in the dryer again,” he says. “It’s been a minute since I washed any of my clothes.”

“You can borrow mine,” Lucas says, tugging him closer. “Let’s just take it easy today. We can eat all of Mika’s food in the fridge.”

Eliott laughs. “Now?”

“Later,” Lucas says, and they do, later, and Mika chases them around the apartment for eating his leftovers, yelling at both of them as they circle around the table, trying to lose him, and Eliott laughs the entire time. It feels good.


End file.
